It took a while, but the first (AFAIK) speedrun of the new generation of 1st-person-shooters is here, finally. Mr. Shambler from TEAMShambler Quake Level Reviews has posted a speedrun of the excellent custom Half-Life level Prisoner of Events on his demo-department over at LostSpirit Custom Level Demos. He finishes the second part of the 'episode' in just 0:21 (or something, see the included .txt); the demo even features a shortcut, so grab it now and enjoy. I had to watch the demo several times before I realised what the hell was going on in the demo anyway; it's probably because I'm used to ogres and fiends and such; flying headcrabs and bullsquid and other weird animals still tend to confuse me a bit =P

You may have to update your version of Half-Life to version 1.0.0.8; otherwise demo-playback errors could occur. Get the HL-patch here.

We now have complete easy runs for all of Quake:

• Optic ran Episode 2 in 4:32
• Peter ran Episode 3 in 3:25
• Ilkka ran Episode 4 in 3:59

There's still plenty of spaces left to fill so keep those demos coming! You can view the table here.

Congratulations to Henning Schürig who became our th visitor (screenshot), beating DooMfienD (who got 99999 and 100001) in the reload race.

It has been almost a year since SDA opened, and the SDA team would like to thank everyone for supporting supporting our site. We hope that you will continue to do so as long as speed running lives.

After nearly 3 months of inactivity, the Twisted Into Form page has finally updated with the results for their speed run contest. Peter Horvath took top spot in the E3M1 contest, Jesse (no, not our Jesse) had the best time in the E3M2, and BurninSun won the E3M3 contest. Full results and links to the demos are available here.

Well, am I glad to see the results finally out. For a moment, I thought this contest was going the way of the VRGN Twisted Christmas contest (read the story from Yonatan's homepage)

We're almost at 100k hits! Make sure you check out our hits counter at the bottom of the page, and take a screenshot and send it to us if you're the lucky one who sees the 100000.

(I copied the counter to the side menu to make things easier :) -Chris.)

Stefan, the QdQstats author, requests that you use the utilities included in the QdQstats 1.6 pack to compile your marathon runs into one pak file. We think that it's a good idea too, as it makes it much more convenient for the viewers to watch your magnificient run. Please read the QdQstats manual for instructions on how to compile a pak from your demos.

Also, due to their size, all marathon runs should now be submitted to Nazgul (you know, that bastard with the 2Mbps direct connection to the US backbone) only. Thanks.

Oh yeah, I haven't had time to update the Quake 2 demos. Hopefully get it done near the end of the week. There aren't many submissions anyway, so please keep them coming in.

Optic made some demos after a period of relative inactivity:

• Easy 100% of Black 3 in 1:27, 17 seconds faster than Marlo
• Nightmare run of Black 3 in 1:22, 5 seconds faster than Stefan Pretty damn fast!
• Easy 100% of Escape in 1:08, 7 seconds faster than Matthias
• Easy 100% of Hotel in 0:43, 6 seconds faster than Black_out

Janne Kalliomäki improves the one level he's devoted to optimizing:

• Easy 100% of IKSPQ2 in 2:10, 6 seconds faster than his previous record...
• Easy 100% of Doom 2 map 1 in 0:28, 1 second faster than Stefan. We received another 0:28 run by Fabian Kollakowski, but we got Janne's demo first.

Benny Wong sends in his first demo:

• Easy 100% of Black 1 in 2:57, 13 seconds faster than Marlo

Asmodeus, one of the guys that have been doing some coops lately on Cult (see below) did some single player runs too.

• Easy run of The Hanger (flyer.bsp) in 0:161 second faster than Optic
• Nightmare run of the same map also in 0:16, 1 second faster than Optic

Marlo Galinski does quite a few new demos:

• Easy 100% of Arcane in 2:15 9 seconds faster than Optic
• Easy 100% of PB1 in 2:14, new
• Nightmare 100% of PB1 in 3:10, new
• Easy 100% of The Well of Lost Souls (well) 4:54, new
• Nightmare 100% of Armageddon 2 in 2:28, new

Apology of the week goes to Thomas "Panter" Pilger, which some of you might know from Compet-n. He sent us a demo on e3m5 a very long time ago, but it got lost between updates.

• Nightmare run of e3m5 in 1:05, 4 seconds faster than Alexander Osipov

Coop demos

Fabian Kollakowski and Marlo Galinski have apparently formed a duo to be reckoned with.

• Their first demo is Beyond Belief map 7 in 0:28, 3 seconds faster than Mattias' and Gunnars demo.
• More demos: Easy 100% of ikspq1 in 0:57, 17 seconds faster than Ilkka and Janne.
• Easy run of ikspq5 in 0:33, 1 second faster than Ilkka and Juho, using a cool new shotgun boost to the elevator button
• Easy 100% of Doom 2 map 01 in 0:17, 2 seconds faster than Attila and Peter
• Easy 100% of Doom 2 map 07 in 0:11, 2 seconds faster than Attila and Peter

Dan J and Asmodeus continue to run Cult, as well as another level:

• Easy 100% of Cult in 0:34.
• Easy run of Base of Disgrace in 0:34 3 seconds faster than Rikkert and Odie

Together with Jakey, they did two three-player coops:

• Easy 100% of Cult in 0:27
• Easy run of Cult in 0:18, adding a shotgun boost over the lava to the 2-player run

There are some more coops to post on the id maps, but I'll leave that to the other SDA people.

Marathon runs

While several people seem to be brooding on Easy All-Quake runs at home and finetuning them, Mattias sends in his second one already.

• 21:49, 2:33 faster than his last entry, and '2 minutes slower than QdQ' =)

Ilkka hasn't been quiet either:

• 9:02, which is a really impressing set of must-see demos...

BTW, we finally got a decent table to list the marathon runs! Currently it only list original Quake maps, but we'll fix one for other eps (The missionpacks, Beyond Belief, IKSPQ etc. etc.) as soon as they are sent in, so, keep those episoderuns coming!

The episode 1 rush is coming to an end...we received Ilkka's submission =)

Ilkka got the following times (from the .txt file):

Level	Time	Description
e1m1	25.57	This is good
e1m2	34.42	Used the armor route -> helps later on.
e1m3	45.44	Didn't want to risk with the zombies...
e1m4	26.35	One could GJ up to the bridge from the water to save 10 seconds.
e1m5	20.56	Not bad, 0:19 would be very good.
e1m6	11.42	This one is very good. Usually ended up with 0:13 or something ;-)
e1m7	14.13	The time sucks, but I didn't want to screw up so I played carefully...
total	2.57.92	Yes! Finally under 3 minutes. This improves Chris' ee1_305 by eight seconds.

We're still working on a proper table. Remaining custom demos will be updated monday.

Here's my first (maybe my only) contribution to the current madness here at Sda. Episode 1 on skill 0 in 3:05.

We have received the first episode run entries! Our current system doesn't allow us the enter the demos quite properly yet, so please be patient while we work on that. I can't let you miss these runs though:

Peter Horvath did an easy run of Episode 1 in 3:28.

The lunatic of the week would have to be Mattias Berggren though, the first player to submit an easy run through *all* of Quake. Yes baby, all levels. His time is 24:22. The run even features some difficult tricks, like the e3m2 jump for example. It also contains the first fish-rocket-jump I've ever seen =)

Jesse, after some zombies refused to co-operate. (Image was slightly edited to censor out some naughty words)

BTW, if you don't already know, we are now accepting Quake Marathon Runs using the latest QdQstats v1.6 to completing each of the 4 episodes Ep1, Ep2, Ep3 and Ep4 in one sitting. Oh, if you're really crazy, you can also attempt to complete all 4 episodes plus End (i.e. the entire Quake) in one long run. Check out the instructions in the QdQstats documents for information on how to record multilevel runs. Good luck!

Version 1.6 of QdQstats is now officially out, so get it now!. Nows the time for y'all to find out the TRUE meaning of the words 'annoying zombies at the end of e1m3'...man, once I finally got the grenadejump to work after a reasonable e1m1 and e1m2, those filthy bastards start throwing limbs at eachother, in stead of being 'cooperative'.....AARGH!! Anyway, you'll experience this soon enough too =) (got 4:06.53 easy ep1 btw, in an attempt to beat Stefan's time, 4:06.90, I guess that's my reward for doing the e1m3 jumps =P )

I'm quite sure you'll be able to beat that time though, so lets have those demos! (for God's sake, don't forget to ZIP them!!)

Ofcourse, the other stats have been updated to v1.6 too: SoAStats for Scourge of Armagon, DoEStats for Dissolution of Eternity, BBStats for Beyond Belief and, ZerStats for Zerstoerer.

Nothing to do with speed running, but..

One of the merry bunch at Gameslink IRC pointed me in the direction of one of the latest Doom modifications - zDoom, it's Doom but with Internet Multiplayer, look up/down and jumping - as it was meant to be!

Check out the zDoom web site for more information.

28 new demos this update! BTW, when sending in your demos, please try to send 1 demo per message, with the mapname, skill and time in the subject. It will help me a lot in sorting through everything. Thanks.

Aivars is back in town:

• Hard ware1 in 1:31, 4 seconds faster than Filip's record
• Hard ware2 in 1:11, new

Jesper improves his own run:

• Easy ware1 in 1:30, 5 seconds faster than his own record

Fredrik sends in a couple of improvements:

• Hard mine4 in :38, 4 seconds faster than Optic's old record
• Hard mine3a in :15, the previous :15 record by Aivars was invalid as he missed the lever.

Optic has no life:

• Easy biggun in :36, 2 seconds faster than Ander's record
• Hard biggun in :36, 2 seconds faster than Aivars' record
• Easy bunk1a in :22, 1 second faster than Fredrik's record
• Easy city2b in :17, 2 seconds faster than his old record
• Easy city2c in :23, new.
• Hard city2c in :24, 2 seconds faster than Aivars' record
• Easy command in :23, 4 seconds faster than Filip's record
• Hard command in :24, 2 seconds faster than my record
• Easy jail2a in :29, 2 seconds faster than his own old record
• Hard jail2a in :29, 1 second faster than Aivars' record
• Easy jail2b in :42, 3 seconds faster than Black Out's old record
• Hard jail2b in :42, 2 seconds faster than Aivars' record
• Easy jail3b in :12, 1 second faster than Fredrik's old record
• Easy mine3b in :22, equalling his own old record
• Easy mintro in :23, 1 second faster than Sean's old record
• Easy power1 in :15, 1 second faster than Will Marsh's old record
• Hard power1 in :15, 2 seconds faster than Aivars' record
• Easy waste1a in :26, 6 seconds faster than Filip's record

Filip has a couple more to add:

• Easy train in 1:05, 17 seconds faster than his own record
• Easy waste1b in :14, 1 second faster than Black Out's old record

Sean's still doing only a select few maps...

• Hard train in 1:04, 2 seconds faster than Filip's record

Newcomer Joakim Forslund contributes 1 more:

• Hard waste1a in :28, 2 seconds faster than Black Out's old record

Newcomer Phil Hall contributes 1 too:

• Hard boss2 in :47, 3 seconds faster than Black Viper's old record

Grab this update's packs:

• Easy pack
• Hard pack

In the QdQ series, we see episode runs made up by multiple players recording each map seperately, and the best time for each map after hundreds of recording are selected for the final product.

Ever wondered what kind of time can be achieved if one single player has to run through an entire episode continously, without the capability to stop and save or load between levels?

Well, wonder no more. An upcoming release of QdQStats will soon allow that, opening up a new door to competitive marathon speed-running. Look out for it!

After just over 4 months of running Markus Taipale has beaten Ilkka's long standing record with an amazing 0:07 second run!

Ilkka has posted a new challenge to run E1M1 in 23 seconds (or less) - head on over to Mineral's for more details!

The competition begins to heat up. As the dust clears, 17 new speed demos are now available for your viewing pleasure.

Aivars managed just 1 demo this update:

• Hard city1 in :59, 2 seconds better than his own record

Fredrik takes full advantage of Aivars short absence:

• Hard base3 in :42, 3 seconds better than Aivars' record
• Hard boss1 in :47, 1 second better than Aivars' record
• Hard bunk1a in :23, 1 second better than Aivars' record
• Hard city2a in :28, 1 second better than Aivars' record
• Easy space in 1:20, 16 seconds better than his own old record
• Hard space in 1:25, new
• Hard strike in :56, 2 seconds better than Aivars' record
• Hard train in 1:06, new

Newcomer Anders Alsén contributes a couple of new demos:

• Easy biggun in :38, matching Optic's old record
• Easy security in :53, 5 seconds better than my old record

Filip also has some demos to contribute:

• Easy command in :27, 3 seconds better than my old record
• Easy train in 1:22, 8 seconds better than Retard's old record
• Hard ware1 in 1:35, 10 seconds better than Aivars' record
• Easy waste1a in :32

Newcomer Jesper Lund makes a sound entry:

• Easy ware1 in 1:35, 1 second better than Filip's record

Black Viper still isn't happy about the city1 situation:

• Easy city1 in 1:00, 1 second better than his own record

Grab this update's packs:

• Easy pack
• Hard pack

ftp.cdrom.com Problems
There's been a temporary problem with the ftp.cdrom.com mirror system, so you'll have problems downloading most of the demos from the previous updates. We'll soon get the problem fixed, once the stuffs are reuploaded back to cdrom. Now would be a good time for Gunnar to put his T1 into good use :)

base1 Controversy
There has been quite a controversy over the base1 :11.8 submitted by The Jackal last week. Meanwhile, I have decided to temporary hold off any further submissions for this map while we discuss with the Q2dQ2 team about the details of the strafe-jumping rules.

Delayed Q2 Update
Sorry for the delays in the update, I've been really busy the whole of the week with the reopening of school. I should be able to find a couple of hours tommorrow to update the Q2 demos before having to start studying for a test.

Finally, here are about all of the remaining custom demos. They are quite numerous; updates have really been scarce lately; for Quake I at least. Speaking of which, The Planet Speaks has an interesting article about of the highlights of Quake I gaming today (among which speedrunning, thanks Fargo for the mention ;)

Right, the demos.

Alexander Osipov stands up to Optic's reign over the custom levels:

• Easy run of Armageddon 2 in 0:31, 2 seconds faster than Optic
• Nightmare run of Armageddon 2 in 0:32, 2 seconds faster than Optic
• Easy run of Eye Socket in 0:55, 3 seconds faster than Optic
• Nightmare run of Eye Socket in 0:55, 4 seconds faster than Optic
• Easy run of From out of Nowhere in 1:01, 5 seconds faster than Optic

Janne Kalliomäki did three 100% demos:

• Easy 100% of IKSPQ2 in 2:16, improving his old record even further. Despite the brutal self-damaging violence Janne is displaying, this is a pretty fast demo =)
• Easy 100% of Doom 2 map 08 (the Quake version, doh ;) in 1:44, 3 seconds faster than Mattias
• Nightmare 100% of the same map in 2:15, 3 seconds faster than his previous record

Matte Berggren submittted one demo (and a coop, see below)

• Easy 100% of Real in 2:37, new

Stefan Schwoon does it on Nightmare:

• Nightmare run of Black 3 in 1:27, 23 seconds faster than Matte
• Nightmare 100% of Black Final in 0:48, 8 seconds faster than Matte
• Nightmare 100% of The Fatal Place in 4:55, 124 (OMG) seconds faster than Richard

Optic submitted only two demos:

• Easy run of The Hallowed Halls (bnt2) in 1:46, 7 seconds faster than Marlo Galinski
• Easy 100% of The Hallowed Halls in 2:04, 9 seconds faster than Marlo

Matthias (Belz) was mildly distressed about Romanov's 1:05 on Gatorman's Diversion from last update: "I can't believe someone else also played Gatordiv and came up with the same route. Damn, and I was so proud of that route." Almost directly after last update we received Matthias' improvement to this run, a 1:02 on easy and a new 1:05 on nightmare. However, shortly after that, Romanov improved the easy run by yet another two seconds, so these are the final times:

• Easy run of Gatorman's Diversion by Romanov in 1:00, 5 seconds faster his previous record (or, two seconds faster than Matthias)
• Nightmare run of Gatorman's Diversion by Matthias in 1:05, new.

Matthias did some more demos:

• Easy run of Missile Bunker Bravo 7 in 0:10, defeating Rikkert's really old record by 1 sec
• Nightmare run of Missile Bunker Bravo 7 in 0:10, 1 second faster than Rikkert
• Easy run of The Well of Wishes in 0:17, 1 second faster than Rikkert. Didn't think this would be possible!
• Nightmare run of The Well of Wishes in 0:18, 8 seconds faster than his previous demo.

You're down to only 3 records Rikkert, so if you're still alive, it's time to act =)

Apology of the week goes to Mr. Shambler, for telling him the demo he sent got beaten, while in fact he did have a record.

• Easy run of Gods of Rapture in 1:02, beats Optic's time by four secs.

Clan Force 9 (well, two of them at least =) took a shot at the coop-Cult run Coen and I did and came up with a one sec improvement:

• Cult, easy coop run in 0:19, by Dan J and Asmodeus.

(heh, Coen was so pissed and swearing because this improvement meant that his name's now dissappeared entirely from all coop tables, and he promised me to beat all of Ilkka's records WITHOUT bunnies within the next month =)

Mattias Berggren and Gunnar Rydberg made a cool skill 3 coop on Doom 2 map 01:

• Nightmare coop 100% in 0:35

IMPORTANT: if we haven't posted your demo today, don't send any frantic email. This update posts only custom demos; if you made a demo on a regular id map (or one of the mission packs), your demo will get posted, but just not in this update. If there's a link messed up don't hesitate to tell us about it though =)

Just a short note to tell y'all the long awaited custom update is close...I've just finished another RDE level, so I'll update those demos as soon as I can. Once again, sorry for the terrible delay, but we're working on it.

Here are some demos Ilkka sent in a while ago but never got updated.

• Nightmare run of E3M6 in 0:31 improving Markus's time by 1 second.
  
• Easy 100% of Black2 in 1:16 improving Marlo's time by 14 seconds.
  
• Easy 100% of Black Final in 0:39 improving Mattias's time by 21 seconds.
  
• Nightmare 100% of Zerstorer3 in 6:15 new demo to the tables.

There still are a couple more of Ilkka's demos and I emailed him asking for them a while ago but no response, unlike Ilkka if you ask me.

25 new Quake II speed run demos. Next update will be Monday afternoon (Singapore time). All runs are now opened, first come first served, times rounded down to the second.

Newcomer "The Jackal" wins the easy base1 race:

• Easy base1 in :11, 1 second faster than Sean's old record.

Aivar continues to rip apart the hard category:

• Hard biggun in :38, equalling Optic's old record.
• Hard boss1 in :48, equalling Fredrik's old record.
• Hard bunk1a in :24, 1 second faster than Black Out's old record.
• Hard cool1 in :56, 20 seconds faster than Geerman's old record.
• Hard fact1a in :08, 1 second faster than Optic's old record.
• Hard fact1b in :09, 1 second faster than Sean's old record.
• Hard hangar2 in 1:17, new.
• Hard mine3a in :15, 2 seconds faster than Optic's old record.
• Hard mine3b in :22, equalling Optic's old record.
• Hard mintro in :23, 1 second faster than Optic's old record.
• Hard power1 in :17, equalling Will's old record.
• Hard waste1b in :13, 2 seconds faster than Black Out's old record.
• Hard waste2 in :17, 1 second faster than Optic's old record.

Fredrik with his usual amount of demos:

• Easy bunk1a in :23, equalling Optic's old record.
• Easy fact1b in :09, beating Sean's old record by 1 second.
• Easy mine2 in :35, beating his own old record by 2 seconds.
• Hard mine2 in :36, beating Sean's old record by 2 seconds.
• Easy mine3a in :16, beating Optic's old record by 1 second.
• Easy strike in :55, beating his own record by 2 seconds.

Sean continues to play with short runs:

• Easy hangar1b in :05, beating his own record by 1 second.
• Hard hangar1b in :05, beating his own record by 1 second.

Black Viper isn't satisfied with his own runs:

• Easy boss2 in :45, 1 second faster than his own record.
• Easy city1 in 1:01, 1 second faster than his own record.

Newcomer Teddy Reilly attempts an unpopular map:

• Easy train in 1:30.

Grab this update's packs:

• Easy pack
• Hard pack.

Daemian "Catnap" Carr used to run a site for Slide speed demos, but unfortunately he could run it no longer. For those who missed Slide running or would like to try it out, Spin has just started a new site for Slide runs.

Due to some technical problem, Ilkka wasn't able to update Mineral's the last few days. The problem still isn't fixed as far as I know, but at least the DM3-contest results are up now, so head over to Mineral's to see what funky new demos are up.

I was just clearing up my bookmarks when I noticed this page. I'm surprised the link to that page is still alive, and man, did it nearly bring a tear to my eye thinking about the good old days of speed running. Well, we've came a long way with Speed Demos Archive since then, haven't we.

15 new Quake II speed run demos. Next update will be Friday afternoon (Singapore time). Now that all the runs are open to all (I can already see people starting to joost for the best easy base1 time), any demos received until Friday will have to compete by the millisecond. After the next update, we'll be back to seconds and first come first served.

Aivar snaps all everything in the hard category:

• Hard city2a in :29, new.
• Hard city2b in :23, new.
• Hard city2c in :26, new.
• Hard jail1 in :31, 2 seconds faster than Sean's old record.
• Hard jail2a in :30, 1 second faster than Optic's old record.
• Hard jail2b in :44, 1 second faster than Black Out's old record.
• Hard jail5 in 1:00, 7 seconds faster than Black Out's old record.
• Hard strike in :58, 4 seconds faster than Fredrik's old record.
• Hard ware1 in 1:45, new.

Sean Crooks (formerly known as Col Korn) snaps up all the short ones:

• Easy hangar1b in :06, retaining his old record.
• Hard hangar1b in :06, retaining his old record.
• Easy mine3c in :07, retaining his old record.
• Hard mine3c in :07, retaining his old record.

Newcomer Filip Söderholm contributes one run:

• Easy ware1 in 1:36, 1 second faster than Black Out's old record.

I found time to do only 1 run:

• Hard command in :26, 14 seconds faster than my own old record.

Grab this update's packs: Easy pack, and Hard pack.

Links to Q2 demos should now work in the tables. If anything seems messed up, let me know.

Marlo Galinski improved the easy and nightmare 100% of levels 1-3 in the Black episode coming up with some very good demos.

• Easy 100% of Black1 in 3:10 improving Mattias's demo by 5 seconds.
  
• Nightmare 100% of Black1 in 4:29 improving Mattias's demo by 44 seconds.
  
• Easy 100% of Black2 in 1:30 improving Mattias's demo by 7 seconds.
  
• Nightmare 100% of Black2 in 2:14 improving Mattias's demo by 34 seconds.
  
• Easy 100% of Black3 in 1:44 improving Mattias's demo by 5 seconds.
  
• Nightmare 100% of Black3 in 2:42 improving Mattias's demo by 1 minute(!).

And we have some great co-op's from Attila and Peter.

• Easy run of E1M1 in 0:23 improving Juho and Ilkka's time by 1 second.
  
• Easy run of E2M1 in 0:07 improving Juho and Ilkka's time by 1 second.

Bug in the Quake II Tables
Yeah, the links to all the demos from the tables are all pointing to the wrong directory. We'll get that fixed soon.

Goals
If you are unsure about what you are supposed to do in each level, pls read goals.txt.

Read the q2timer guide!
Please make sure you read the q2timer guide carefully before attempting any runs. Poor Ilkka didn't use q2timer.ini and sdemoname and had to waste a fraction of a second to pick up a machinegun on base3 and ended up losing to Fredrik by 0.1 second.

Finally, the first batch of Quake II speed demos are in. Dominating the field are Fredrik and newcomer Aivars, with Black Viper contributing a couple more demos, making a total of 22 demos.

Aivars prefers to do it the hard way:

• Hard base1 in :12, beating Col Korn's old record by 1 second. Aivars time of :12.7 also beats the :12.8 submitted by Fredrik.
• Hard base3 in :45, beating Optic's old record by 15 seconds.
• Hard city1 in 1:01, beating Black Viper's old record by 5 seconds.
• Hard fact2 in 1:04, beating Black Out's old record by 7 seconds.
• Hard lab in 1:54, new.

Fredrik prefers to do it in pairs:

• Easy base2a in :17, beating Optic's old record by 1 second.
• Hard base2a in :17, beating Optic's old record by 3 seconds.
• Easy base2b in :16, beating Optic's old record by 1 second.
• Hard base2b in :16, beating Optic's old record by 1 second.
• Easy base3 in :41, beating Black Out's old record by 6 seconds. Fredrik's time of :41.8 also beats the :41.9 submitted by Ilkka.
• Easy boss1 in :47, beating his own old record by 1 second.
• Easy hangar1a in :07, beating his own old record by 1 second.
• Hard hangar1a in :08, beating his own old record by 1 second.
• Easy jail3a in :20, beating Optic's old record by 1 second.
• Hard jail3a in :21, beating Optic's old record by 1 second.
• Easy jail3b in :13, beating his own old record by 1 second.
• Hard jail3b in :13, beating his own old record by 2 seconds.
• Easy jail3c in :13, beating Col Korn's old record by 1 second.
• Hard jail3c in :13, beating Col Korn's old record by 1 second.
• Easy strike in :57, beating his own old record by 4 seconds.

Black Viper contributes a couple more:

• Easy city1 in 1:02, beating Optic's old record by 3 seconds.
• Easy boss2 in :46, beating his own old record by 1 second.

Competition is pretty heated in a select few maps, but come on people, there are lots of other free maps available! You can grab all the easy or all the hard demos in this update within one zip file.

Another update from him? You can't be serious. If you don't believe it, take a look:

Peter Horvath gives us three beautiful easy 100% demos from the first episode of the originals:

• Easy 100% of e1m1 in 0:56. Improves his own record with 3 seconds. Does a trick I've never seen before on this map.
• Easy 100% of e1m2 in 0:51. Improves Ilkka's record with 3 seconds.
• Easy 100% of e1m3 in 1:08. Improves his own record with 22! seconds. New route =)

Two Coops

Mattias Berggren and another swede called Gunnar Rydberg (welcome aboard =) had a go at an easy 100% of bbelief7. Here is the result: 0:31.

Another duo who's enjoying the pleasures of cooping is Attila and Peter. They made an easy run of e1m4 in 0:24.

Justin complained over the lack of his demos in my last update, so I promised I'd do them the next day. Here they are, all 100% and all over two minutes:

• Nightmare 100% of h1m2 in 3:03. Improves Yonatan's record with 76 seconds.
• Easy 100% of r1m1 in 2:28. Improves Nolan's record with 25 seconds.
• Easy 100% of r1m5 in 3:35. Improves Mattias Berggren's record with 61 seconds.
• Nightmare 100% of r1m5 in 5:36. Improves Mattias Berggren's record with 185! seconds.
• Nightmare 100% of r1m6 in 4:32. New.
• Easy 100% of r2m5 in 3:32. Improves Mattias Berggren's record with 62 seconds.

On with the custom Quake demos...

There were a few confusing submissions because it took so long before we updated everything; there were a few cases of multiple entries for some slots in the tables.

Top of the bill was the level Base of Disgrace with no less than 7 entries for three slots... Here are the fastest ones:

• Easy 100% in 0:56 by Marlo Galinski, 13 seconds faster than Stefan
• Nightmare run in 0:59 by Optic, 19 seconds faster than Matthias
• Nightmare 100% in 1:09 by Optic, 27 seconds faster than Stefan

Another level worth mentioning is The Hallowed Halls - Marlo Galinski improved all records for it. Check 'em out:

• Easy run in 1:53, 1 second faster than Gunnar
• Easy 100% in 2:13, 15 seconds faster than Mattias
• Nightmare run in 2:30 32 seconds faster than Mattias
• Nightmare 100% in 3:51 26 seconds faster than Mattias
  
  He also improved Ilkka's (!!) 100% of Avatar by 25 seconds...
  
  
• Avatar, easy 100%, in 6:30

Some more Optic demos:

• Easy 100% of From out of Nowhere in 1:26, 11 seconds faster than Thomas
• Easy 100% of EarthWorld in 1:39, 15 seconds faster than Thomas

Finally, even I did a demo myself a while ago:

• Nightmare run of IKSPQ4 in 2:43, 36 seconds faster than Matthias

These are the demos for now, I've been so friggin' busy with RDE lately, I've barely gotten any sleep last few days. I think I'm doing a fine job looking like a zombie at the moment =)

More demos in a few days.

Alright, I'm receiving too many runs. Please make sure your time beats those from the old SDA records before you send them in. Thanks. BTW, if you wanna join the Q2dQ2 team, now would be your chance to prove yourself

It's been a while =)

I'm updating the demos I found in my attachments-dir, but there's probably a lot I've deleted earlier. The updates haven't been flourishing lately =).

First off today is Marlo Galinski who did:

• Easy run of bb1 in 0:16.
• Nightmare run of bb1 in 0:17.
• Nightmare 100% of bb1 in 2:11.
• Nightmare run of bb4 in 0:20.

Markus Taiplae improved the easy run of e4m4 to get a 0:22.

Attila and Chroy runs together on nightmare e1m4 and got a 0:26.

Finally! Q2Timer v1.11 is out, and we can all start speed running Quake II. Make sure you:

1. Get or upgrade to Q2Timer v1.11
2. Read the rules for Q2 running.
3. Read the Q2Timer usage guide on how to setup Q2Timer for use with SDA speed running.
4. Get the latest q2timer.ini.
5. Check out the extra rules from yesterday's update.

Please note that only runs are available at the moment. 100%s are not available yet. Enjoy speed running.. I'll have the first Q2 update after the 96 hours...

Quake II speed running has to be delayed for a while while Nolan fixes a couple of show-stopping bugs in Q2Timer. Expect Q2Timer ver 1.11 in a coupe of days, and running will start immediately after. These are the basic rules which will apply to all Q2 running:

• Bunny-hopping/Strafe-Jumping: We are using the same rules as that decided for the Q2dQ2 project. Bunnyhopping is allowed only to perform a trick jump to get from one place to another which cannot be done with a normal jump.
• Timing: Timing is taken rounded *down* to the second.
• Priority: If 2 demos of the same time are submitted by 2 person within one update, the one who submits first gets the record.

There are a couple of exceptions to the priority rule for the first 7 days of competition.

• So that runners living in non-favourable timezones will not be disadvantaged, there will be a 4 days (96 hours) period immediately after the announcement of the start of Q2 Speed Running where all demos submitted will be judged by time to the millisecond, and the fastest time at the end of the 4 days will be the record. After the 4 days, we revert back to seconds.
• Runners who hold records from the old SDA runnings have the priviledge of being given 7 days to equal their record and retain it. This priviledge disappears if someone is able to beat their old record by the full second, or at the end of the 7 days when the record will be given to the fastest time (in milliseconds) submitted.

If there are any discrepancies in the rulings, any decision made by the SDA administrators will be final.

Woohoo, today's my birthday! Taking some of the pressure to update off my back seems like the perfect birthday gift (well, except for Halflife + Worldcraft perhaps ;). Anyways, here's the first load of demos that are waiting. I'm posting the ones that have been waiting longest first, in case you were wondering why I left out some of the other demos. More coming soon...

(Oh, and speaking of birthdays, happy birthday to Nolan as well, even though I'm three days late =)

Mr. Shambler actually improved two of Optic's runs by quite a few secs, using a really cool and very high double grenadejump.

• Easy run of The Ruiner's Revulsion 0:26, 21 seconds faster than Optic
• Nightmare run of The Ruiner's Revulsion 0:27, 20 seconds faster than Optic

Optic does a few demos (although a lot more are still waiting to get updated):

• Easy run of Gods of Rapture in 1:06, 12 seconds faster than Richard
• Easy run of the Disturbed in 0:47, 5 seconds faster than Thomas, 'getting closer to the optimal'
  
  Ofcourse he did some 100%-demos too:
  
  
• Easy 100% of B.C. Dwellings in 1:05, 9 seconds faster than Matthias
• Nightmare 100% of B.C. Dwellings in 1:05, 10 seconds faster than Matthias
• Easy 100% of Darkages in 1:08, 9 seconds faster than Thomas
• Easy 100% of The Disturbed in 1:16, 10 seconds faster than Thomas

Mattias Berggren does some fighting on bnt2, The Hallowed Halls:

• Easy 100% of The Hallowed Halls in 2:28, new
• Nightmare 100% of The Hallowed Halls in 4:17, new
• Nightmare run of The Hallowed Halls in 3:02, new

'Critters' has probably been the map which saw most improvements over the last few months. Because of our slow updating we received two 0:56 demos, this one from Max, and another easy 0:56 from Optic, which arrived just two days too late...but more improvements seem to be possible: Max says "This is the 7th improvement to this map! (...) And Fredrik, let it stay at 7 improvements" =)

• Easy 100% of Critters in 0:56, 1 seconds faster than Fredrik
• Nightmare 100% of Critters in 0:57, 1 seconds faster than Fredrik

More demos from Optic, Ilkka, Stefan, Alex, Matthias, Janne and others coming SOON...

Some people have been complaining to me about the lack of custom updates, and not entirely without any reason I must admit. I've been very busy last weeks, and was offline most of the time due to network problems I had. The other SDA people don't seem to be anxious to update the custom demos either, so I hope to find some time to start updating the demos this week. We haven't forgotten them though, so please be patient...

I haven't had much free time lately but I can find time to post my own demo :)
I improved Matthias's easy 100% of h2m1 by 20 seconds to get 2:50.

q2timer
What can I say?
Hmmm... how about "its out"? Yeah you read that right. It was released yesterday actually... So go to the q2timer page and download the long awaited v1.10. This means that Quake 2 speed running will start again in a few days. Dont even think of sending us q2 demos until we post rules! Until then you can practice.

"You just have TOO much time on your hands ;)" was Chris' reply to a mail we received from Matthias Belz this week, and I must say I felt the same way Chris did =)

Here is the mail:

"It bothered me that some of the levels on SDA support transparent water and some don't, so that you have to switch the transparent water on and off all the time when watching a series of demos. Well, I started to reVis the maps that needed it and I'm finished right now. I have revised 83 maps in total and made a Vispatch data file so that others can have transparent water too."

So, get the patch here and enjoy! Thanks a lot Matthias!

After 2 months of inactivity, Twisted Into Form has finally updated and promised to have the results for the speed run contests in one or two days time. Of course, that update was done 2 days ago, so... :)

Peter doesn't fail to impress me yet again doing another insane Nightmare 100%! He improves Optic's E4M2 Nightmare 100% by 28 seconds(!) using a new route & ogre grenade jump to get 1:42

Now excuse me while I find a clean pair of shorts :)

A few more new demos, let's start with:

Optic

• Nightmare 100% of e2m1 in 1:33 - 6 seconds faster than Marlo Galinski
• Easy 100% of hip2m4 in 1:46 - 12 seconds faster than Matthias

Marlo Galinski did a Nightmare 100% of e3m1 in 1:50 - 2 seconds faster than Will

Two Newcomers

• Romanov Maxim did an Easy run of gatordiv in 1:05 - 1:52 faster than Optic! - some very cool tricks here :)
• Kåre Slettnes did a Nightmare 100% of e1m3 in 2:02 - 20! seconds faster than Will using a new route

Ilkka has posted his newest challenge, hop on over to Minerals for a piece of the action.

OK all this is my first update so apologies if I've made any mistakes :-)

Some new id demos:

Newcomer Marlo Galinski did a 100% of e2m1 in 1:39 on Nightmare - one second faster than Will.

Markus Taipale improved his easy run of e3m6 by 1 second to get 0:29

Muriel did three demos:

• Nightmare run of e3m5 in 1:09 - two seconds faster than Evan
• Nightmare run of e4m7 in 1:00 - two seconds faster than his previous demo
• Easy 100% of e4m7 in 2:18 - eight seconds faster than Nolan!

Here are a few new demos...but these are only about 20% of all demos we still need to post. I don't have that much time right now, so you'll have to do with these for the moment...

Optic does a few new ones:

• Easy 100% of Ephemerality in 1:00, 14 seconds faster than Stefan
• Easy 100% of Eldencross in 1:06, 8 seconds faster than Thomas Bergendorff
• Easy run of PSE1 in 0:37, 1 second faster than Ilkka.

Janne did two demos:

• Easy 100% of IKSPQ2 2:17, 5 seconds faster than his previous time
• Nightmare 100% of Doom2_08 in 2:18, 8 seconds faster than Mattias' record

Using a powerful fiend boost I improved Optic's easy Mexx2 run. While I was at it, I read in Matthias' 0:13 nightmare run txt file: "Much harder than on skill 0. This should be the optimal time", so I improved that one too...

• Mexx2, easy run, in 0:11, 1 second faster than Optic
• Mexx2, nightmare run, in 0:11, 2 seconds faster than Matthias

Matte Berggren did a nightmare run on Black 3: 1:50, new.

Stefan Schwoon did an easy 100% on The Fatal Place: 3:19, new.

Coop

Since there was a .map file included within 'cult.zip' I added 8 coop starts to Cult. You can get the modified level here. Coen and I did an easy run in 0:20.

News archives are now available from the misc section, incase anyone is interested. It's not a very clean way of doing it, but I'll come up with something better when I have some time to write a proper archiving system :)

Mattias is the first crazy person on the list... He did 100% demos of every black level, on both easy and nightmare skills! Talk about crazy :)

• Black1 in 3:15 on easy and 5:13 on nightmare.
• Black2 in 1:37 on easy and 2:48 on nightmare.
• Black3 in 1:49 on easy and 3:42 on nightmare.
• Blackf in 0:50 on easy and 0:56 on nightmare.

Oh, and he also improved Jim Paris' easy run of zer1m6 by four seconds to get 2:26.

Crazy person number 2 is Will... Why is he crazy you ask? Well, before today the longest speed demo ever was a 12:46 nightmare 100% of e2m6 by me. Will broke the record. He did a nightmare 100% (what else?) of r2m4 in 16:07. He says it took him a month just to learn the route, but judging by some parts of the demo, I'd say he never did get it totaly memorized. :) Anyway, a big applause is due for Will who now has "the slowest speed demo"!

Will did two nightmare other 100% demos two, but they're not quite so long:

• He improved his previous e2m1 by six seconds to get 1:40.
• He improved e1m3 by seven seconds to get 2:20. I'll bet David Coronat hated to read that...

The third and final crazy person (for this update anyway) is Ilkka. He's crazy just because he did two, three player 100% demos:

• He 100% of e1m1 on easy in 0:29 with Juho and Juho-Jussi. This is 14 seconds faster than the previous three player demo, and its also faster than the 7 player demo...
• The same three also did a three player 100% of e1m6 in 0:25, ten seconds better than the previous three player demo.

Ilkka's not the only one doing three player 100%s though, Magnus, Mattias and the other Gunnar did another one, this time e2m4 in 1:09.

Attila and Peter did a coop demo too, easy run of e1m5 in 0:14, three seconds faster than the previous two player run and one second faster than Ilkka's three player run from just a few days ago...

What update would be complete without demos from Optic? He did three 100% demos on easy skill:

• He quickly improved Janne's e3m7_157 by eight seconds to get 1:49.
• He improved Ilkka's bbelief1 by two seconds to get 1:52.
• And he improved Setfans's bbelief3 by 18 seconds to get 1:40.

Markus Taipale took over the e3m6 runs:

• He improved Evan's previous run on easy by ten seconds to get 0:30 using the candle jumps from Ilkka's nightmare run in 0:38 which...
• ...he improved by six seconds to get 0:32.

Oh, and of course when I say "crazy" I mean "overly enthusiastic about speed running" :)

Ilkka has posted the results of the Tower contest and I thought I'd p1mp it a bit as I won two out of the three sections :-) Check it out!

If I'm lucky I think I've got all the rest of the demos...

A newcomer to SDA, David Coronat, has improved the nightmare 100% demo of e1m3. Definitly a hard demo to be your first, I applaud any newcomer who starts with a nightmare 100% demo. Anyway, he improved Will's time by five seconds to get 2:27.

Ilkka improved his own nightmare run of e1m2 by one second to get 0:34...almost eight weeks ago. Apologies are due to Ilkka for us taking so long with that one.

Ilkka also did a few coop demos:

• He did a 3 player mad coop of an e1m5 run on easy with Matti and Juho-Jussi. They used lots of teammate boosting to get 0:15, three seconds faster than the single player run.
• Ilkka and Juho improved Peter and Attila's runs of e4m6 by one second to get 0:21 on both easy and nightmare. They say it's optimized :)

More coop...

• Attila and his "inexperienced Quake player" friend Chroy did an easy run on e4m1 to get 0:18, the same time as Peter's single player time...
• Mattias Berggren did a mad coop with Magnus Persson and Gunnar Rydberg [not Muad_dib Gunnar :)]. They did a 100% of e3m2 on easy in 0:46, three seconds faster than the two player 100%.

I can't forgot the only demo I've done in a long time. I improved my easy run of mexx10 by 37 seconds to get 2:27. One thing strange about this is that I didn't do the grenade jump I did the last time... I didn't know then that's its faster to not do it :)

I'm wondering if anyone was reading my plan... Then I'll know if I should bother continuing to update it. Email me if you think I should keep updating it.

It took a while, but we're back in business at last! We know you have all been waiting a long time for a demo update, and we wouldn't want to disappoint you here it is: we've got over 90 minutes of new speedruns for ya =)

New demos

The following demos are mostly ones that have been waiting a long time to get updated. We know there are still more to go, among which quite a few regular ones, and they will be posted as soon as we are able to.

Optic strikes back:

• Easy 100% of The Cobalt Palace in 1:18, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of The Forbidden Base in 0:52, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of The Mountain Base in 1:16, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of The House of Traps in 1:28, new to the tables. Lots of rocketjumps.
• Easy run of The FunRun in 0:55, 3 seconds faster than his previous record

Mattias Berggren adds a few 100% demos:

• Easy 100% of Doom2_08 in 1:47, 4 seconds faster than Stefan
• Nightmare 100% of Doom2_08 in 2:26, 11 seconds faster than Stefan
• Easy 100% of Mexx 5: The Terror of Tzeentch in 4:04, new to the tables
• Nightmare 100% of Mexx 5 in 6:01, new to the tables
• Nightmare 100% of Zer1m1 in 1:07, new to the tables
• Easy run of Zer1m3 in 2:46, 27 seconds faster than Evan! Pretty good run for such a hard level.
  
  He also did four Rogue demos:
  
  
• Easy 100% of r1m5 in 4:36, new to the tables
• Nightmare 100% of r1m5 in 8:41, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of r2m5 in 4:34, new to the tables
• Nightmare 100% of r2m5 in 6:54, new to the tables

Matthias Belz did some of his regular chart-filling:

• Easy 100% of BC Dwellings in 1:14, new to the tables
• Nightmare 100% of BC Dwellings in 1:15, 2 seconds faster than Optic
• Easy 100% of Bubbah's Slate in 0:43, 4 seconds faster than Justin
• Nightmare 100% of Bubbah's Slate in 0:41, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of Escape in 1:15, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of EvilDead Cabin in 1:31, new to the tables. Matthias has a really funny way of bunnying, watch closely =)
• Nightmare 100% of The Cult in 0:57, new to the tables
• Nightmare run of IKSPQ4 in 3:19, staring Death in the face at the exit =)

Ilkka provided us with some more cool demos, as usual.

• Nightmare run of Critters in 0:19, 1 second faster than Optic
• Easy run of Harm's Way in 0:03, 3 seconds faster than Evan. That jump was possible after all! =)
• Easy run of Shadow over Innsmouth in 1:11, 11 seconds faster than his previous time. Sorry for not updating this one earlier Ilkka.
• Easy 100% of IKSPQ 5 in 1:57, new to the tables
• Nightmare 100% of IKSPQ 5 in 3:22, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of Zer1m3 in 5:25, new to the tables.
  
  He did two Hipnotic runs too:
  
  
• Easy run of h2m3 in 0:39, 5 seconds faster than his previous time
• Easy run of h3m2 in 0:31, 8 seconds faster than Nolan

Thomas Bergendorff sent these:

• Easy run of The Disturbed in 0:52, 3 seconds faster than Optic
• Easy 100% of The Disturbed in 1:26, 9 seconds faster than his previous demo
• Nightmare 100% of The Disturbed in 1:54, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of The Eldencross in 1:14, new to the tables
• Easy 100% of Darkages in 1:14, new to the tables

Janne Kalliomäki submitted his first original id map:

• Easy 100% of e3m7 1:57, 4 seconds faster than Optic. The accompanying text file tells us that he decided to do it the way he did because "killing ogres with an axe is a traditional Finnish way of fighting", at least if you read it the way I did ;)

Newcomer Romanov Maxim improved Matthias' Jawbreaker run:

• Easy run of Jawbreaker in 2:14, 7 seconds faster.

Some demos were updated a long time ago, but somehow never reached the tables or 'got lost'. Here they are:

• Easy 100% of Avatar in 6:55, by Ilkka Kurkela
• Easy 100% of ByConToCon in 0:24, by Optic
• Nightmare 100% of ByConToCon in 0:24, by Optic

And finally: a coop demo

Ilkka and Juho did an amazing coop: easy Harm's Way 100% in just 1:56! That sounds like a slow demo, I know, but I dare say it's close to optimized!

The massive zipfile

To summon disaster over your empty harddrivespace click here and here download all of these funky new demos in two big fat 4M zips! I tried to upload an 8M zip, but somehow ws_ftp kept screwing me at 80%, let that program burn in hell for eternity. Btw, the links to these zips might not work until a few hours after this update.

Misc stuff

A small notice about the custom level zer1m6: this level can be completed by simply slopejumping from the pool at the start to the trigger_changelevel. This week we received yet another 0:04. We are NOT accepting this run. If you understand what speedrunning is about youll see the logic behind this. What's cooler, watching somebody do a 1-sec demo (cause about 80% of the 0:04 in zer1m6 is movie) with one simple jump, or to watch somebody sneak past I-don't-know-how-many-monsters in no time?

For those of you that haven't been there: Mr. Shambler has opened a great custom level-review site which recently moved to PlanetQuake: http://planetquake.com/teamshambler. If you're into custom levels, this is a must-visit. It even features some speedruns!

Oh, and according to 'vague rumours' the Run of the Week section here at SDA should be reopening soon in a new and improved form...stay tuned!

Ok, so i hassled Nop to come up with a new news template layout for us and a few new graphics. Like em? So a big thanks to Nop for helping us out, and now you must checkout his kickass website where you can see countless examples of his rocking artwork.

GameArt

Oh yeah, the misc button doesn't do anything yet, that will be fixed shortly when we've sorted out what pages are going in that section :)

Couple of Demos I did that I've had lying around:

• The Gibplex in 0:28, Skill 3, 1 second quicker than Optic.
• The Gibplex in 0:28, Skill 0, 1 second quicker than Optic.
• E2m7, 100% skill 0 in 1:39, 5 seconds quicker than Nolan.

Still working out a few issues with the new system, if you have any comments feel free to mail me, also mail me if you find anything that is going whack.

Better late than never, the Compet-N site for Doom Speed-Running is up on HTML, featuring tables of fastest times for every single Doom level. Basically, the Doom version of Speed Demos Archive. Go dig out your old Doom disks (what?! you've deleted it from your HD already?!) and check it out!

Yes, it's up. There's lots of things that we still have to do in terms or arrangement, so you'll have to bear with us for a while whilst we get certain things sorted. Jesse will be doing a big update tomorrow, so stay tuned for that.

Minerals
I had a quick chat with Ilkka Kurkela the other day (if for some insane reason you don't know who he is, then you shouldn't be visiting this site :) and thought it might be quite cool if he were to move his speed running page into PlanetQuake as an SDA hosted site. Anyway, to cut a short story even shorter, he was pretty happy with the idea so you can now find his page at mineral/. Ilkka's page is mostly a repository of speed runs he's done himself, and a placeholder for some of the really cool contests that he runs which have been extremely popular. A new one started the other day, so be sure to check that out if you haven't already.

Re-Design
Providing nothing major comes up between now and tomorrow with the new system, we should have it ready to launch tomorrow along with a hugh update! Stay tuned!

Just so people don't bug me on ICQ anymore, the coding for the new site is complete. All we are waiting on for now is to get the coop demos into system, which I am leaving to the others, so bug them :)

You can now get an in depth explanation as to why Q2 timer is still not finnished in Nolan's .plan : http://cgi.planetquake.com/chris/finger.exe?login=radix@mail.planetquake.com. :)

Ilkka has gone ahead and made another one of his strange maps. I wander where he gets his ideas from for these things? :) An initial inspection of the shot he posted on his page leads me to believe that it's going to require one really whacky trick to complete this level, check it out!

Happy New Year to all SDA readers from me and the rest of the SDA staff, well, we haven't heard from Gunnar for a few weeks now so I have no idea where he is, still he's been AWOL before and reappeared several weeks later so I do hope he's going to be back. Maybe his exams were too much for him :)